Rudolf Carnap–The Grandfather of Artificial Neural Networks: The Influence of Carnap’s Philosophy on Walter Pitts

Abstract

The importance and relevance of philosophy for the development of the AI is often neglected. By revealing the influence of Rudolf Carnap on Warren McCulloch’s and especially Walter Pitts’ work on artificial neural networks, this influence could be reexposed to the scientific community. It is possible to establish a firm connection between Rudolf Carnap and Walter Pitts by pointing out to a personal relationship but also to a more internal structure of that influence as evidenced by Pitts’ usage of Carnap’s logical formalism. By referring to Carnap’s work, Pitts was able to abide Kantian notion of unknowable and undescribable and to lay foundation of the world as a completely describable structure. It also meant that it could be possible to construct machines that use neural networks just as the biological entities do. Thus, Carnap could be regarded as the grandfather of artificial neural networks and logic, divided by the unfortunate historical development, could become united again as a single discipline that keeps both it’s mathematical and philosophical side.